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Fire ecology

Shiro TSUYUZAKI
Plant community ecology / Environmental conservation

Mount Usu / Sarobetsu post-mined peatland
From left: Crater basin in 1986 and 2006. Cottongrass / Daylily

(Update on December 7 2011)

Fire ecology (火災生態学)

Contents

Fire ecology | Alaska | Japan | Western Australia | References·Link

Fire ecology (Revegetation after wildfire)

Although fire ecology is not so popular in Japan, wildfire is common with global scale. In fact, various plant taxa and communities have evolved fire-adapted life histories. For examples, smoke-induced seed germination is remarkable in South Africa and Australia where woodland fire is common, and serotinous trees, e.g., Picea mariana, establish in Alaska and California. While, the development patterns of such plant communities affect the intensity and frequency of fire, and such interactions between plants and environments are recognized. Here, we call 'fire ecology' a whole aspect of fire-related ecology.
Global warming will change the characteristics of fire, represented by its scale, intensity and frequency, via changes in precipitation and the other climatic factors.

A wildfire observed on August 9 2009 between Coldfoot and Fairbanks. A fire spot is seen on the right side.

Furthermore, the function of forests will change from carbon sink to carbon source, due to increase in number of fires. Those predictions suggest that fire ecology is one of the important research themes on global warming.

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Alaska

We started the monitoring of Picea marinana forest recovery after large-scaled forest fire occurred in 2004 at the north-facing slope of Poker Flat near Fairbanks, Alaska. See the abstract reports below.

The effects of intensive forest fire on revegetation in interior Alaska (mid-term report, February 2006)
The effects of intensive forest fire on forest revegetation patterns in interior Alaska (mid-term report, February 2007)
Effects of wildfire on revegetation in interior Alaska (Final Report, December 2007)
Vegetation recovery for four years after large-scaled wildfire in Alaska (Reports on researches in the Arctic utilizing IARC-JAXA Information Ssytem (IJIS) and Satellite Data 2008)
Vegetation recovery for five years after large-scaled wildfire in Alaska (Reports on researches in the Arctic utilizing IARC-JAXA Information Ssytem (IJIS) and Satellite Data 2009)
Vegetation recovery for six years after large-scaled wildfire in Alaska (Reports on researches in the Arctic utilizing IARC-JAXA Information Ssytem (IJIS) and Satellite Data 2010)

All files are

UAF

Alaska

Alaska Climate Research Center

Poker Flat

Fire

Dendrochronology

ANWR and Toolik Lake

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Japan

See Japanese Page

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References

Research period: see CV

Publications related to fire ecology

Iwata, H., Ueyama, M., Harazono, Y., Tsuyuzaki, S., Kondo, M. & Uchida, M. 2011. Quick recovery of carbon dioxide exchanges in a burned black spruce forest in interior Alaska. SOLA 7: 105-108
Kimura, H. & Tsuyuzaki, S. 2011. Fire severity affects vegetation and seed bank in a wetland. Applied Vegetation Science 14: 350-357.
Kushida, K., Kim, Y., Tsuyuzaki, S. & Fukuda, M. 2009. Spectral vegetation indices for estimating shrub cover, green phytomass and leaf turnover in a sedge-shrub tundra. International Journal of Remote Sensing 30: 1651-1658
Tsuyuzaki, S., Kushida, K. & Kodama, Y. 2009. Recovery of surface albedo and plant cover after wildfire in a Picea mariana forest in interior Alaska. Climatic Change 93: 517-525.
Tsuyuzaki, S., Sawada, Y., Kushida, K. & Fukuda, M. 2008. A preliminary report on the vegetation zonation of palsas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, northern Alaska, USA. Ecological Research 23: 787-793

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